Tender Braised Pork Cheek in Red Wine Sauce

Tender braised pork cheek in wine sauce is a strong and powerful flavoured dish although the meat is so tender and melt on your tongue. I’ve encountered this dish on a tapas night out in San Sebastian, Spain, hidden Tapas bar in a downtown plaza dark corner called “La cuchara de San Telmo“, a divine place! It’s their star dish, they don’t even have to write it down on the menu board anymore.. since it’s so popular. It was served as a tapas, which means it was a small portion, but it was too good to just get a bite… we add to order a second time this tapa. Simply divine!

Beef cheek in red wine sauce

The trick here is to cook slow and long your pork cheek! Especially with this particular piece of meat. The pork cheek is so underrated, it should be the most expensive and exquisite piece of pork but lucky for our wallet it’s not… Cheeks got all the flavour and it’s relatively a lean part, it’s secret lays in collagen, which is a flavour bomb and if cook properly get so tender. Any piece of meat with lot of collagen, like ribs for example, need a long and slow cooking process in order for the collagen to turn into tender gelatin (jelly). Once that process is done, your meat will melt like butter on your tongue. A pleasure!